We’re Paying for Convenience

Dana Chinn is a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

September 22, 2011

The device comes first.

Sure, it’s nice if you can get a free digital song, video or e-book. But it’s useless unless you have something on which to play or read it. An iPod, a smartphone or an e-reader is a substantial investment. Once you’ve chosen a device, you’ll buy the content for it. You’ll pay with money or with other currency like watching an ad or providing the personal information companies use to sell those ads or sell you other things. You’ll pay for convenience. And habit.

Devices like iPods create a commitment to acquire content, so the devices are used.

Today’s youth have grown up with millions of easily accessible songs, videos and books. This glut has lowered prices on everything, of course, but it’s also led to a tremendous need for the devices and services that will store and organize people’s ever-expanding digital stashes.

It makes sense that CD sales have plummeted. Songs in iTunes usually cost less, and if the goal is to get a file onto a music player, few consumers want to take the time to rip a CD. But why does iTunes sell far more songs, when Amazon MP3’s are usually cheaper? Convenience, laziness, whatever you call it, it’s just easier.

It’s a similar dynamic for videos and books. Netflix lost subscribers with its 60 percent price hike and split apart its streaming and DVD businesses, but it will probably continue to have enough depth, breadth and utility to keep a core subscriber base. The Kindle has some titles that the Nook doesn’t, and vice versa, but many people are too vested to switch. When there’s so much content available, what’s easy to get is good enough.

The value of content seems to be increasingly based on accessibility. Apple, Amazon and Google are now offering some seriously useful cloud storage solutions that will serve content to any device. Perhaps the next big money in content will be in storing it rather than producing it.